Burnettiquette

Tiny Giant, Jumbo Shrimp, Mandatory Gratuity

A young couple in Bethelehem, Pa., was arrested on theft charges recently when they refused to pay an 18% tip that had been rolled into their restaurant tab, 'cause they insisted service was so bad their waiter didn't deserve a tip.

Pope and John Wagner had a meal with friends at Lehigh Pub in Bethelehem and waited for about an hour for their food. They also had to fetch their own napkins and silverware.

When they got their $73 tab, they noticed the 18% gratuity had been rolled into the bill. So they told the head bartender that service was whack, paid him for the food and tax, and prepared to leave.

The bartender, most certainly a weasel considering his next move, called the police and reported the Wagners had stiffed the restaurant.

Charges probably won't stick. So this was all a big fat waste of tax $$$.

So I'm clear, if service is good you must tip. If you don't you suck and will suffer bad karma. There are few less rewarding jobs than waiter/waitress, save eye booger cleaner in a room full of allergy sufferers, or toilet-paper-roll-replacer in a busy nightclub or airport bathroom.

And if you have a really high tab, I don't have a problem with a restaurant adding an 18% or 20% tip to your bill and marking it clearly as such.

That's sometimes necessary to combat the tiny-minded person who thinks it's a sin to tip more than $5 or $10, even when their total bill is several hundred dollars.

But if service is bad, I don't have a problem with you tipping accordingly.

I've made exceptions. Mrs. B and I have been out to eat and gotten lousy service, and just as I prepared to teach the waiter/waitress a lesson for not being nicer, one or both of us noticed a tear in their eye or a miserable look on their face. And it struck us that they were having a bad day and that a bad tip would teach them nothing. It would just make them bitter and add to their bad day.

Still, a theft charge for not tipping? Harsh. Nothing gratuitous about that.

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The first rule of Fight Club...

Can you believe it's been 10 years since Tyler Durden graced the silver screen in arguably the coolest film in a decade that otherwise brought us too many remakes and lots of visual crap from over-sized Hollywood studios?

If that question was gibberish to you, it's a reference to Fight Club, the movie that, in my opinion, confirmed Brad Pitt and Ed Norton to be very good actors.

I have always been just a little scornful of people who ramble on and on about finding themselves. Really, I've just never gotten any pleasure out of listening to Tony Robbins-esque folks giving lectures about discovering the "real you." I figure I am who I am, and I will grow or shrink according to my willingness or lack of inspiration, respectively.

Fight Club, however, was a breath of fresh air to me, 'cause as a 20-something single guy at the time, I related to the angry, frustrated characters, who were gainfully employed and therefore "contributing" to society, according to the most narrow definition, but who were often unsure of themselves. And in that sense they were aimless, wanderers.

So Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) creates Fight Club, and guys who are dissatisfied with the sameness of their lives, "join" the club and let off steam by beating the crap out of one another. And they all walk away bruised and sometimes bloody, but rejuvenated, feeling some purpose, and oddly happy.

Sounds silly, I know. But ladies before you say as much to your husbands or partners, remember that turnabout is fair play next time you want him to come with you to watch a film about some guy driving a 1950 Ford pick-up truck, taking photos of bridges in some rural county, where he falls in love with a lonely woman...or something like that.

Most famous quote from Fight Club, courtesy of Tyler Durden: "Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells "stop!", goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight."

There's more to it than that, but in case you haven't seen the film, I don't want to give too much away!

Anywho, following is the greatest quote from Fight Club. It is the quote that embodies Tyler Durden's role as a younger, hip version of Howard Beale. It is Durden's explanation of the "spirtuality" of Fight Club: "Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God d%^ it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy sh!t we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

All this said, unlike a couple of knuckleheaded friends of mine and other young men I read about later in news accounts, I never engaged in a homemade Fight Club after the movie came out. As deep and thoughtful as the film was, if you can see past the black eyes and bloody lips, it was still just a movie. And times haven't gotten so bad that I'm going to voluntarily fight a stranger to to make myself feel better. That can get you locked up, committed to a padded cell, or hurt.

I'm already too pretty to go to jail. I'm definitely too pretty to let myself get knocked out...in order to find myself.

Whatever. Go rent Fight Club.

PS. Follow me: http://Twitter.com/jamesburnett.

 

Ten things that surprise me...or maybe not

• Levi Johnston, former almost son-in-law to Sarah & Todd Palin and father of their only grandchild, exposed his junk for Playgirl magazine.
• Playgirl magazine still exists.
• In her new book, Going Rouge Rogue, Sarah Palin bit the hands that fed her. And relax, Palin fans. I'm neither bashing the GOP or hockey moms. You should know this already. But just in case, "Bit the hand" is just a figure of speech, not a comparison to a dog or any other mammal large enough to hold a hockey stick or wear lipstick. Anywho, setting aside your political leanings, you have to believe that any reining in done by McCain staffers during last fall's presidential election was done to help McCain - and therefore Palin - win the White House. To bash those staffers now over things like diet advice, wardrobe, Saturday Night Live, and media interviews is silly.
• The first missing kid whose picture was posted on the side of a milk carton is still missing 30 years later. Not making fun. It's a tragedy. But have you ever taken even 10 seconds to look closely at one of those milk carton pics and then kept an eye out for the kid? Me either. And I used to drink a lot of milk.
• In the "It was bound to happen" category: A young athlete with big potential did not drop out of college to turn professional. Nope, Jeremy Tyler broke a record. He dropped out of high school. That's right, Tyler, a 6'11" basketball phenom, quit San Diego High School after his junior year. You can't enter the National Basketball Association draft till you're 19. So the impatient Tyler stupidly signed a 1-year $140,000 (that's thousand, not million) contract with a pro team in Haifa, Israel, so he could polish his skills and raise his profile till he becomes eligible to play in the U.S. Here's the shocker: Tyler's Haifa experiment is going very badly A good crossover dribble is great. Tyler's suck-ups (parents, friends, etc.) should have told him reading is fundamental, 'cause at the rate he's going, he may never make it to the NBA.
• The U.S. Army gave a bogus story...at first about the circumstances surrounding the murders committed at Fort Hood recently by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan - everything from who took him down, to whether he'd made any declarations involving his religion, to whether he was alive or not, following the shooting. Why?
• Andre Agassi's early-to-mid 1990s power mullet was actually a pelt. I would have written about this sooner, like right after Agassi admitted it in his new book. But the shock was too great for me.
• This one falls into the Hell-must-exist-for-people-like-this category: A woman in Texas faked breast cancer, so she could collect donations and use 'em to pay for breast implants. She got the implants.
• Carrie Prejean has more sex tapes, eight total. So if the first that she admitted to was "the biggest mistake of (her) life," as she told Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel show, then where on the sliding scale of mistakes do the other seven tapes fall? Lesson: It's OK to take a moral stance on something, even if your stance is unpopular. If you're really principled, then popularity shouldn't phase you. On the other hand, before you take "principled" stands that involve finger-wagging, news conferences, and making the talk show rounds, you'd better make sure you don't have any closet skeletons that will negate your self-righteousness in the eyes of the general public. That's not caving in to popularity. That's just good sense. BTW, those of you, my friends, who always scold me for allegedly picking on sexually "free" people, leave me alone on this one. I'm not picking on Prejean for loving herself. But you gotta admit it was kind of very stupid to do it on tape, know the tapes were out there, and still go on a media blitz portraying herself as the picture of the new, modern, young "Christian soldier."
• This one from the Daily Mail in Britain: Universal Pictures, one of the film companies that frequently distributes to theaters worldwide movies so bad they might cause cancer, has been busted in the UK for deleting the images of African American actors Faison Love and Kali Hawk from promo posters for Couples Retreat. Asked to explain, Universal said it was innocently trying to "simplify" the poster for international audiences. Loosely translated, "simplify" in this context means "remove the scary black people so that our British audiences don't see the posters and get turned off to this film."

I told you about this...

What's crackin', friends and frienemies?

I hope you've all been well and have had a restful break from me blogging. See how I flipped that and put the onus on you for my absense? Man, I'm good. I should be a politician.

Anywho, I've been plotting my takeover of the world in recent weeks, starting with conquering the Internets.

On a more serious note, I wanted to write a quick something about a current homicide case unfolding in the Miami area.

In mid-September, 17-year-old Danny Rodriguez, a student at Coral Gables High School, fatally stabbed classmate Juan Carlos Rivera, also 17, on campus.

Since then speculation, based on what friends and family of both young men had to say, was that this murder was largely about a fight over a girl.

And it turns out that was part of it. But what actually prompted the murder, the morning of Sept. 15th? A "mean mug," or as Rodriguez told police in interrogation video released yesterday, a "bad face."

Yep, on the morning of the murder Rivera gave too tough a look to Rodriguez and took a knife in the gut and the back for it.

Some of you not familiar with the urban colloquialism of "mean mug" may think it's a stretch that a "bad look" could prompt a murder in any but an insane person, but consider it a sign of the times.

When I covered crime back in the day, I wrote about murder cases in which the otherwise "normal" suspect took a life over a scuffed shoe, flirting with another man's girlfriend, scratching another man's car bumper, and so on. I could go on and the "motives" would get even more trite, but I think you get the point.

So I have to say I'm not surprised, not even a little bit.

May Rivera rest in peace.

Follow me: http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

My Friday Column: Practical Environmentalism Through Priorities

Happy Friday, friends and frienemies.

Today's Miami Herald Metro column is about how to get average people to care about the environment.

But don't let that one line lead you to assume you know the direction this story takes. Give it a read here.

A hint for you: We prioritize what we need, whether that's food, shelter, work, money, transportation, or something less serious. When we don't need, we de-stress. When we de-stress, we care about our surroundings, ie. our environment - our literal surroundings and the environment as we think of it by traditional definitions.

Anyway, check out the column, and don't forget to follow me at: http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

How much safer is flying supposed to be than driving?

I've never been a fearful flier (with literally two exceptions, on which we experienced toss-you-out-of-your-seat turbulence), but more and more when I read stories like this, I'd rather ride a unicycle blindfolded through a maze of bear traps than get on a plane.

Organic gardening in an unlikely place

So I have this story in today's Miami Herald about a very cool gardening project in Overtown, a gritty Miami neighborhood.

Ironically, even if you don't live in South Florida, if you've ever watched an episode of A&E Network's murder documentary series, The First 48, or a Rick Ross music video, you might still be familiar with Overtown.

Anywho, the story is about an organic garden in the middle of Overtown. And I don't know about you, but I admit that in the past when I've heard people in the so-called "concrete jungle," boasting about their organic garden, I've usually found one of two things: Either the "garden" turns out to be a half-dried 6x6-foot patch of dirt with Charlie Brown's Christmas tree growing out of it, or the garden turns out to be the product of obnoxious yuppies who planted it only as a conversation starter, for when they have well-heeled "green" friends over to visit.

So when I first heard about the Overtown organic garden, I was skeptical. I was thinking "This neighborhood has issues. Who gives a crap about a garden?"

But then I went and saw it. It's not a dry patch. It's nearly an entire city block and is in the process of expanding to two more full city blocks.

It employs people in the neighborhood. And is thriving so much, that at least one major grocery store chain is considering doing business with this garden. It is a beautiful space that is spreading the vibe.

So if you have a minute, follow the link at the beginning of this post and check out the story.

BTW, don't forget to follow me at: http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

My Friday Column: To snitch or not to snitch

What's crackin' folks? Happy Friday to you.

My column in today's Miami Herald is about a kid who sort of bucked a national trend and "snitched" on another kid who was trying to commit a theft. The kid who reported the attempted theft got second and third-degree burns for his trouble, when the other kid rounded up several friends, tracked down the "snitch" and set him on fire.

We have this tunnel vision - some of us do, anyway - that says "stop snitching" is an urban phenomenon that takes place in the so-called 'hood and (only) involves gangbangers and wannabe rappers and poverty-stricken people who fear gangbangers and wannabe rappers.

In reality though, "stop snitching" is an American phenomenon. It's as classic as apple pie and Ballpark franks. It is pervasive in police departments, in the military, among athletes who know damned well that teammates are abusing 'roids, among young siblings, etc.

And so when something like this happens, we all shake our fists and say "How dare they set this kid on fire!" But our culture says something else, because "snitching" is discouraged no matter what we say on our soapboxes.

Anyway, read the column here.

Prison Inmate Plastic Surgery on Taxpayer Dime: Right, Wrong?

Before I even give you this scenario, I can tell you right now I say "No!" Seriously, (almost) no gray area for me.

Now, here's the deal: Daryl Strenke, 45, is serving 30 years in a Wisconsin prison as part of a 60-year sentence, for murdering his ex-girlfriend, the first half of what he apparently planned to be a murder-suicide.

Strenke lured Samantha Verby out of her home, blasted her in the face with a shotgun, with her 7-year-old daughter a few feet away, and then turned the gun on himself.

While aiming at himself Strenke suddenly became a bad shot and instead of dying, mangled his face.

His mother says he's "tortured" daily by the physical pain caused by his self-inflicted injuries...again, self inflicted after he shot his recent ex-girlfriend point blank in the face.

Drumroll, please! The Wisconsin Department of Corrections is about to embark on a series of expensive cosmetic surgeries, at taxpayer expense, to repair Strenke's face and ease his pain.

They say, it's their obligation to provide medical care to inmates, because inmates are wards of the state. I get that argument, and I actually agree with it, if the medical care is either basic "maintenance" stuff or emergency care to save an inmate's life or prevent his death.

But no one with the WDoC will say whether Strenke's disfigurement and related issues make for a life or death situation. His mother says though that the surgery is needed 'cause he can't speak clearly, he's in constant pain, and since he shot his teeth off all his food has to be puréed. So he's in pain, can't chew solid food, and has difficulty talking.

Should he get the surgery, and should the state pay for it?

You already know my answer. I'd say 30 years in prison with physical pain and disfigurement serving as a daily reminder that you murdered someone is a fair trade off. My one exception would be if Strenke's family/supporters can pay for the surgery themselves.

Follow me, please: http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

Cop Talk

Interesting story on NPR today about some police departments experimenting with plain English.

I've always been curious about the 10-signals (like 10-4, etc.) cops have used on the street - not about what they mean, 'cause as a crime reporter back in the day I had a lot of 'em memorized, but rather why they used them instead of just describing what they were encountering.

The two logical answers that most police agencies cite are that using a 10-signal is a lot faster than giving a normal description, and a 10-signal gives them a little privacy from criminals and other curious folks or weirdos who might be listening in on them.

I get the speed argument, but the privacy thing is a farce. When I was covering crime I had a couple of friends who drove around with police radios in their cars for fun. One guy even kept one on his nightstand, much to the chagrin of his wife. That pair? They had memorized every signal in use by their local police department, and they had even deciphered a lot of the cop slang used in idle chatter over the radio. There are lots of folks out there like these two. When the cops in that town wanted privacy they had to go to a secure channel not accessible by civilian police scanners, 'cause they know lots of folks were listening.

On the other hand, there's an argument to be made for making cops' actions as transparent as possible. It could protect the innocent who are falsely accused - civilians as well asinnocent cops accused of misconduct.

Anyway, the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Police Department is one of the expirementers. They decided to try plain English after officers and other emergency personnel couldn't communicate with one another over the radio, following a bad storm a few years ago.

So now, instead of getting on the radio and telling a dispatcher "I've got a possible 414 or a 419 at a residential property," Chattanooga cops have been instructed to say things to the effect of "I see what may be a prowler or a burglar at a house."

Instead of jargon like "...making entry to suspect domicile," Chattanooga cops are encouraged to tell the dispatcher, "I'm going inside," or "I'm walking through the front door."

Makes sense to me!

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